


I'm a huge fan

by comeasyouarememoryah



Category: Black Mirror (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-04-12 04:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19124521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comeasyouarememoryah/pseuds/comeasyouarememoryah
Summary: A fangirl's dream.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Aged up/A timeline of Rachel's feelings for Ashley from innocent crush to healthy relationship.

Rachel's parents all have unique music preferences. Her mom loves edgy rock bands despite the lack of piercings and ripped jeans. Her dad plays country when he drives and works on his latest contraptions. Her mom says that she married him for his brain, not his taste in music. Jack and Rachel listen to Gen's music because she jokingly says, "We need to expose our children to good music, not crappy country songs" as Kevin lovingly kisses her cheek. Rachel loves dancing wildly to her mom's kind of music blaring through speakers. She also loves summer drives with her dad, country songs softly in the background and chocolate fudge brownie ice cream cone in each of their hands.

Rachel is ten when she stumbles across Ashley O's second CD. Her friends are starting to beg their parents for Justin Bieber posters and concert tickets. They also listen to Ashley O but Rachel rolls her eyes at how her friends fight over the title of Mrs. Bieber. The positive messages in Ashley O's songs are what she needs when her mom is diagnosed with cancer. She sees Ashley as a symbol of hope when her mom's favorite bands are too dark. Her dad stops listening to all forms of music desperate for the doctors to save his wife. Rachel obsessively watches all of Ashley's old videos. Young Ashley's hair was long and blonde unlike the short pink bob she has on her album cover. Rachel decides to grow her hair out like young Ashley. Ashley is joyful and happy and what Rachel wants to be. She figures that when her hair is long enough, she can give it to her mom while cutting it and dying it pink like older Ashley. She realizes that she is gushing at Ashley the same way her friends squeal over Justin Bieber. Rachel thinks nothing of it.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Rachel is thirteen when she loses her mom. She sobs into her mom's old band shirts for the first few weeks. Jack starts wearing darker makeup and gets a nose ring, she wants the world to see that she is tough despite losing her mom, but Rachel hears her crying from the opposite side of the room. She turns off the repeating playlists of her mom's favorite music and replaces them with Ashley's songs, just to provide both of them a distraction. Their dad has zero clue on how to handle the emotions of adolescent girls, so he does his best to support them and pay off the medical bills that piled up, disappointedly bitter by the irony of paying for treatments that did not do what they were supposed to do. Jack eventually starts to associate Ashley O with crying and grieving over her mother. Rachel still sees Ashley as her hope.

Rachel is fifteen and blushing at the fact that Ashley Too joked about how she and Ashley should make out later. Seeing someone that gave her strength during the worst time in her life weakly lying on the bed with wires everything reminded her too much of losing her mom. She hasn't felt that helpless since her mom passed but once Ashley wakes up, the adrenaline took over. It feels surreal to her because Ashley is not what she expected, but even better than the version of Ashley she had in her head. She's coming to terms with the fact that her childhood love for Ashley is just the same kind of infatuation girls get for boy bands. Her biggest problem is that girls never really get to meet their idol the way she has. Boy band obsessions tended to fizzle out with age. After saving Ashley from her aunt, Rachel and Jack realized that Ashley has no one. And that the people in her life were paid to be in her life and only the career aspects.

Rachel is nineteen when she figures out that after one semester of college that she is definitely in love with Ashley, who seems to be more interested in Jack. She credit's real life Ashley for not feeding her the sugar-coated shit when she tells Rachel that not everyone needs to be set on having a career in the music industry and that the only thing that mattered was that she was doing something she loves. Rachel focuses her work on school instead, hoping to get into medical school to save people like her late mother. She forces herself to delete all the Ashley songs from her life because she knows it will always be a silly crush and she needed to move on.

Rachel is twenty when she catches the last concert of her sister and Ashely's tour on Ashley's thirtieth birthday. The way Ashley kisses her on the balcony is the only thing that mattered. Ashley admits to liking her since she was eighteen but never acting on it, knowing that the age gap was too big and too strange. The punk Ashley Too looks like it is rolling its "eyes" at them.


End file.
